A Shadow of Wings (8 page)

And so Cam could recognize a depressed area when he saw one. In some ways, Dylan’s neighborhood, if it could even be called that, was worse than some he’d seen in third-world nations, because he could see that at one time, this must have been a thriving part of the city. Huge old brick factories with shattered windows and graffiti-scarred walls loomed spookily in the increasing gloom. Multi-family homes that had probably been grand in their heyday now sagged with grime and neglect. 

Dylan must have noticed Cam’s shifting gaze. He touched the side of Cam’s hand with his fingers. “Nothing like slumming it, huh?”

“I’ve seen worse,” he said honestly.

“Yeah? Where?”

He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Tash and I have traveled a bit.”

“Tash. Your brother, right?”

That was the story they’d settled on. He nodded. 

“You got any other family?”

The set answer was no, no in the conventional sense, but he didn’t want to keep lying to Dylan. The truth, however, was too strange. “Some other relatives in other parts of the world.”

Dylan tipped his head. “You sound, like, Irish or Aussie or something.”

“A mix of many. Comes from traveling so much,” he said. He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. Talking about himself made him nervous. “How about you? Are you from around here?”

“Hell, no.” Dylan rolled the tops of the paper bags holding their Chinese takeaway a little tighter. “I’m from outside Boston. Braintree, ever heard of it?”

He smiled at the odd name. “Is there really a tree that grows brains?”

“Yeah, big ones.” Dylan bumped his shoulder. “That’s why I’m so fucking brilliant.”

Cam laughed. He liked Dylan’s wit. Among other things. Since he’d pushed his glasses to the top of his head, now that it was getting darker, he was free to gaze his fill, and his belly stirred with excitement. Dylan walked with arrogant confidence, head up, challenging the world. He was a survivor, toughened by the street, more of a warrior than Cam in some ways. Being with him made Cam light-headed with the sense of freedom and possibility. Since Cam had turned twenty-one, no more than a few weeks earlier, Tash had allowed him a longer leash. Now, finally, he could experience life without his mentor dogging his every step, constantly correcting, lecturing, warning. 

“What’ll happen to Gertie?” he asked, matching his stride to Dylan’s.

“I guess she’ll have to stay there overnight, but I’ll stop in early to walk her. You sure there’s no way you can take her, even for the weekend?”

“I hated seeing her in that cage. She looked like she didn’t think we’d come back for her.”

“I hate to see anything caged.” Dylan sought out and met Cam’s eyes in that way that only he could, but after a precious second, before Cam’s foul gaze could harm his new friend, he let his focus slide away. He’d been told infinite times that humans couldn’t look in a cockatrice’s eyes for more than a few seconds. He’d witnessed the effect himself. 

Clenching and unclenching his pocketed hands, he wondered what it meant that Dylan could look at him like that. Maybe he shouldn’t be reading anything into it. Or maybe he should. There were legends… Ancient stories in which men and monsters didn’t live as enemies. He’d been taught they were metaphors for man’s dual nature and the cockatrice’s submissive role in the universe. Maybe they weren’t just fables? Unlike Tash, Cam wasn’t afraid to question the brothers’ teachings, but even he acknowledged that to do so in practice could be playing with fire.

“Tash needs to do some research before we travel again,” Cam said, filling in the empty space between them. “I might… I might be able to take her tomorrow, just for the day.”

“That’d be great. I can pick her up from the clinic and bring her by. What time?”

“It’s likely he’ll be gone early and won’t be back until late. So…any time after eight, I’m guessing.” He bit his lips, his nerves pricking at him. He couldn’t shake the mental impression of his mentor’s disapproving scowl. “I have a cell phone. I’ll give you the number. Call first. Tash can’t know.”

“Tash doesn’t like the idea of you having a boyfriend, is that it?”

“No.” He exhaled a long plume of breath into the chilly night. “He wouldn’t understand this at all.” He slowed his steps, thinking about the weasel attack on Tash in Sperlonga. He’d learned to live with the enemy’s actions, but might he be putting his new friend at risk? “Dylan, I shouldn’t even be here.”

Dylan stopped altogether, and they stood in a circle of yellow light from a flickering streetlamp. “Do you want to be here?” He crowded a little closer so Cam felt his body heat, couldn’t help but focus on his face, his lips. “Because I want you here. Right here, with me.”

He nodded, afraid to meet Dylan’s gaze. In its own way, it was every bit as hypnotic as Cam’s.

Dylan twined their fingers together and murmured, “That’s good, because we
are
here.”

“What?” 

“This is my place.”

He looked about and saw the shabby multilevel brick building behind him. Dylan pulled him along onto a porch with a broken railing and peeling gray paint. They went in through a door set off to the left of a window box cluttered with dead plants. Cam barely had time to adjust to the harsh illumination from a bare bulb and the miasma of cigarettes and alcohol before they came face-to-face with a barrel-chested elderly man in a stained white T-shirt. 

The old man took one look at their joined hands and curled his lip. His beady black eyes burned. “
Puto
,” he spat.

Cam recognized the word for a male whore and wondered which one of them the old man referred to. 

“Fuck off, Jose,” Dylan said.

“You don’t bring his kind here,” Jose growled, his Spanish accent thick, stabbing his finger at Cam. At least now he knew who he thought was the whore.

“He’s a friend,” Dylan snapped back. “Not that you ever had one of those, you old shit.”

Cam sensed the tension thickening, and his calling washed over him in an unexpected rush, a fierce prickling in his scalp that tumbled down into his toes. “Dylan, it’s fine. Just a misunderstanding.”

But Dylan apparently had a temper on him. A short one. Releasing Cam’s hand, he bellied up to Jose. “You know, I’ve just about fucking had it with your self-assigned hall monitoring. You scared off Manuela’s granddaughter last week. Wouldn’t even let her see her own
abuela
.”

“She’s a whore too, and a junkie. She’s no good. None of you kids no good.” He made a chopping gesture with his hand, the top of his bald head and cheeks flushing red with his anger. “You bring crack, meth, whores, fags—”

“Hey!” Without shifting his eyes from Jose, Dylan shoved the bag of Chinese at Cam. 

Cam clutched it to his chest. The sense of danger smothered him. He grabbed at Dylan’s shoulder. “Dylan, you must stop.” Or something bad was going to happen. He glanced around, but they were alone in the narrow, musty hallway. When he looked back, Jose had somehow produced a sawed-off shotgun and had it pointed to Dylan’s chest.

“Jose, man, hey.” Dylan flung his hands up in the air and held them there. “Listen, seriously, dude, this guy’s a friend. Just a friend.”

“You take your
puto
”—Jose’s eyes narrowed and spittle flew from his lips—“and take him out to the alley. You do your filthy business out there. Not in here!”

Another door down the hallway cracked open, and a terrified-looking old woman in a worn floral housecoat peered out. “Jose?”

“Get back in your apartment, Manuela,” Jose shouted. “I’m taking out the trash.”

Cam stepped in front of Dylan, who immediately tried to shove him out of the way. Cam held him back with one arm. Jose lifted the barrel of the shotgun. “No one would miss you,
puto
.”

In Spanish, Cam said, “You will harm no one.”

He met Jose’s gaze. As if he’d been struck, Jose crumpled to his knees, and the shotgun clattered to the tired tile floor. His hands covered his face. 

Cam closed his eyes and turned his head quickly. He let Dylan push past him. 

“What the fuck? What the fuck did you do, man?” Dylan’s voice dropped to a harsh whisper as stared at Jose. Rocking back and forth on his knees, the old man moaned. 

Cam sucked in a breath. “We should go.”

Dylan stared at him for a second, then pulled him down the hallway. Behind them, Cam heard Jose groaning. “Serpiente. Serpiente!
Quetzlcoatl
.”

Manuela echoed the last word on a gasp, and she slammed the door shut as they passed.

Dylan fumbled for his key, then unlocked a door at the end of the hall and opened it. They darted inside. Just as quick, he shut the door and locked it. He stood for a silent second with one hand on the knob and the other on the dead bolt. And then he…laughed.

“Oh, man.” He turned toward Cam with a crooked grin. “Now I see what you mean about your eye mojo.”

The burning sensation of the call flooded away from him, and Cam shoved his fingers through his hair, scratching his still-tingling scalp. The danger had passed but left him antsy. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t let him shoot you.”

“He wouldn’t have.” Dylan approached and pulled his hands down gently. Cam twisted his face away. He didn’t know how much power still lurked in his eyes. “He’ll be all right, yeah?”

Cam nodded, his heart walloping against his ribs. “Yes. He’s only stunned.” Not too stunned to call him serpent, and that other name, which was highly inaccurate in any case. Still, Jose must know the old legends. 

Before Cam could dwell on it, Dylan slapped him on the arm. “Then we’re good. Fuck, man, don’t worry about it. He threatens me almost every night. We fight like that all the time. It’s just a pissing match.”

“Pissing match?” Feeling off balance and out of his element—as indeed he was—Cam shifted his weight restlessly, wondering if he should stay or go.

“Like two roosters having a standoff in the hen house, you know? We both want to be the boss.”

“The boss? The boss of what?”

“Well, that’s a good question.” He looked around at his apartment—room, Cam mentally corrected when he turned to examine the space. It was just one room with scuffed wood floors. A streetlight illuminated one corner that held an air mattress covered with a dark blue sleeping bag and a rumpled sheet. A minifridge hummed in another corner. The sounds of traffic buzzed in through a partially opened window with grimy, broken blinds covering it. 

“This is your place?”

“I know it doesn’t look like much. Hell, it’s
not
much.” Dylan set the Chinese food on the floor by his makeshift bed, then pulled up the blinds, letting in a breeze and a little more light. “Believe it or not, it’s a step up for me. Pretty soon I’ll be out of this dump, though. I’ve been saving up my pay from the clinic. In another few weeks, I’ll have a couple months’ security saved, plus the first month’s rent for a decent place. Then maybe I can get a better job too. You’d be surprised at how people write you off when they see this address on a job application.”

Small as the room was, Cam felt safe there. Safe with Dylan and in no hurry to go back into the hallway to confront the old man again. He crossed the empty space to stand opposite him at the window. “You don’t like working there?”

“No, I like it plenty. Dr. Martin’s been great. But, you know, business is crappy for her. Most of her clients can’t pay their bills. She’s the last resort for the hard-luck cases. Half the time, she ends up putting the animals down, they’re so far gone when they get to her.” He shook his head and stared out the cracked glass. “Lucky for me, I was another hard luck case she couldn’t pass up.”

“Why, what happened?”

“I brought in a box of abandoned kittens. She said as long as I came in a few times a day to feed them, I could keep ’em there. In between feedings, I started making myself useful. Cleaned the cages, swept the floor. Pretty soon, she gave me a few hours on the clock. It’s not much, but it’s the best job I’ve had since I came here.”

“What about your family? Do you miss them?”

“Nah.” He lifted the blinds to peer down at the street, then let them fall. “Haven’t talked to anyone for a few years now.”

“I can’t imagine being without my family.” At times, it sounded tempting.

Dylan crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the wall. “Like that brother who wants to control everything you do?”

“He…”
Isn’t my brother
, he wanted to say. God, how he wanted to tell Dylan everything. To live with the weight of so many secrets on his shoulders was a curse of its own. Part of him envied Dylan his simple, uncluttered life. “He’s my mentor,” he said instead. “We travel together, and he teaches me how to be in the world. How to speak to others. History, philosophy, everything. He’s very wise.”

“And a fucking homophobe.”

Cam shook his head. “He isn’t. It’s just that I shouldn’t be with anyone.”

“For fuck’s sake, Cam, you’re twenty-one. Ain’t you even had a boyfriend before?”

“It wasn’t permitted. Besides, there wasn’t time. I was always on the move. I was allowed to be with others, in class. I spent three years at a private school in Bann with—” He caught himself before he said humans. “With others my age.”

“Didn’t you make no friends?”

He’d wanted to. Badly. But because of his eyes… Because he was a monster who could kill with one glance… “There were some I liked. But Tash kept me busy. Said it would only be asking for trouble if I got involved with anyone.”

“Tash.” Dylan drawled it like it left a bad taste in his mouth. Then he pushed off from the wall and ran his hands up and down Cam’s arms. “Well, Tash ain’t gonna come between us. Not here. Not now.”

“I told you, I can’t stay long. He does expect me back. I only told him I was dropping off Gertie.”

“What’s he gonna do, come looking for you? There’s no way he’d find you here.”

That was true, he supposed. “He’d be angry.”

“So what? How angry does he get? He don’t hit you or nothing, does he?”

The chain weighed heavily around Cam’s neck. “No, but… He’s hell to live with when he’s mad, and he’ll make my life miserable.”